Death Dog #2 // Review
The police ar there right outside of a tent that’s been placed on an empty lot in the city. It’s one policeman and a whole bunch of robot dogs. They’re asking about a missing loss prevention dog and they want to know if a homeless mother and daughter have seen the missing dog. Things aren’t going to end well for anyone involved in Death Dog #2. Writer Bryce Ingman and artist Alan Robinson render a fun, little dystopian action drama with plenty of dark comic appeal. Color comes to the page courtesy of Paul Little. It’s a fun continuation of a series with a great deal of potential.
Information is shared. The tent is destroyed. The robot dogs move on into the night. The next morning, Wyatt awakens in the tiny shack that he’s been living in. The loss prevention dog hanging out next to him seems insistent on protecting him, which is a bit ironic considering the fact that the authorities wouldn't be after him if he didn't have the dog with him. And it's not like he claims that it's his property or anything like that. But there are going to be circumstances beyond his control that coming to play when the police track him down.
Ingman delivers a story that feels very much like it is bringing together a lot of different elements that feel distinctly cyberpunk. Why it's just some kid who is on the outside on the fringes of society. There's advanced tech and artificial intelligence that is at play. Subversion of authority. The dehumanizing nature of advanced bureaucracy. It's all there in a very tightly rendered and a well articulated bit of social satire. But it all rests around the central concern of a pet like intelligence, taking responsibility for protecting someone. There is a real man's best friend sort of a quality going on in the story that's also very appealing in universal.
Robinson does a good job of making the dog in question look both very canine and very mechanical at the same time. There's a soul within it that really comes across quite vividly on the page. There’s an impressive amount of detail that Robinson is rendering in the world around Wyatt and his dog. The squalor of contemporary life in the shadow of great wealth is the price of a page with heartbreaking clarity. In light of all this it's really easy to feel a strong connection for Wyatt and his dog.
There are also a few pieces of flash fiction that up here at issues end. One of which is that kind of an entertaining variable plot piece. Was really remarkable about that particular story is the fact that it becomes across with us satisfying amount of clarity. This is pretty remarkable considering how short it is. A flash fiction piece that's also a variable plot story is something that's really hard to nail in such a short stretch of words. Once again, the text based fiction lends the overall issue added depth that makes it feel like more of a celebration of fiction than a single issue with a single contemporary comic book.
